On a spur of the moment trip to Iloilo a few years ago, I ventured to visit Iloilo High School. The reasons were sentimental. Over a hundred years ago my Dad went to this school.
Started as the Iloilo Normal School in 1902, the Iloilo High School had American teachers, professionals from the United States who were brought to different parts of the Philippines. The Thomasites are credited for setting the foundation of the the American educational system in the country, a legacy of Americans colonial rule. The Iloilo school itself was established to train teachers.
Iloilo High School
My Dad and his older brother Jose studied in Iloilo High School. It is not clear how they settled in Iloilo (on a visit to the city a few years ago, I passed by the Iloilo port where boats from Cuyo still dock) but much can be attributed to Mr. Joe Albertson, a Thomasite teacher who was principal of Iloilo High School from 1915-1919, exactly the same time that Bernardo and Jose studied in Iloilo. It is part of our family’s legends that both Bernardo and Jose worked at the Albertson home, Dad as a caregiver/nanny and Pepita as laundry boy. In 1919, Bernardo graduated valedictorian with his brother Jose as the salutatorian.
The Albertson friendship continued even when Mr. Albertson returned to the U.S. and established a local newspaper, the Peekskill Times. One of our favourite family pictures of that time was a dashing Bernardo visiting Peeksill in the late 1920’s when he was enrolled in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a government scholar.
My sister Rory with my mother Sally relocated to Peekskill in the 70’s after my father passed away because of the Albertson connection. My 2nd sister Bernie had Larrabee Albertson, the young child my father helped raise, walk her down the aisle when she got married.
Visiting the Albertsons in the 1990’s, I remember asking Larabee and Lois Albertson of their memories of my father. One of the more touching memories I remember is that when his father Joe was dying, he called out “Bernardine”, the young boy he considered as his first son.
My Father's Gifts 
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